Hey I'm wondering if anyone had run RotR with the new classes, or if anyone has an opinion on their compatability. I'm new to GMing and I'm thinking I want to run this and whether I should limit the classes to what was out at the time or have it open for everything (everything on the paizo site anyways)
|
Your fine those classes are not OP or anything. They were added to be played in all adventure paths.
Just being a new GM you might want to keep it simple but unfortunately some players get tired of sticking to core stuff after playing for years.
Only class I see to cause problems is the Summoner. Not sure what this new Unchained book is going to do to them but currently summoners are strong and Master summoners are close to be too strong.
Outright ban leadership and Limit crafters...really stick to the time frames so a player doesn't abuse crafting.
I would recommend giving them the free feat from the players guide as suggested...they are going to need it. This AP is a player killer.
The anniversary edition of RotRL is the only AP I own.
From what I can see, reading through it, it doesn't look like the newer classes should cause any particular problem.
The real risk looks like over optimized characters, since APs are written for average proficiency.
I'm going to be running it soon as well, and the best advice i can give you is to sit down with your potential players and talk about their characters and a basic synopsis of the AP. That will give you the best idea on where the campaign will go and how the party balance will be.
As for alternate classes, they are should not be a problem, if your players understand that optimized characters ruin the story very quickly, and rp has high value in APs.
I'm going to be running the aniversary edition hopefully.
I didn't know that about optimization, in what ways can it ruin it?
The people I'm playing with are either seasoned GMs themself or aren't going to do the work to abuse leadership or crafting, so I probably wont have a problem with that
Having recently played through it with a Slayer, a Synthesist Summoner, a Paladin, and myself as a gunslinger/spellslinger/eldritch knight wizard, our conclusion was that:
Slayer is fine, but a bit ineffective due to the combat monstrosity that is a Synthesist Summoner! The paladin was very effective, and a spellslinger is much weaker than a normal wizard, although less squishy.
I wouldn’t allow either a Synthesist or a Master Summoner, and I'd steer people away from being a dedicated archer or gunslinger - simply because they will overshadow most melee fighters, not because they break the whole AP.
|
From what I remember, if you only play the encounters that are written and some random encounters, it feels very much like a railroad.
I didn't have any qualms with archers, lack of ranged will make many encounters as written very tough.
As always, encourage the players to read through the player's guide. It gives some good background and build advice.
Of course all the general stuff applies too, if you have more than 4 players be prepared to adjust the wealth and number of mooks upwards (or downwards if you have less than 4). One thing I might mention is to fine tune the CR levels especially at low levels, lots of classes don't hit any sort of stride until level 3-4.
talk to the players about what class they want to be first before you start playing and make them stick to it the entire way. our barbarian desided he wants to be a wizard instead so he swapped characters so the GM told us to pretend it was a wizard the entire time then he went back to his barbarian in the same play session. Also keep multiclassing to a miniun and mmake sure to check every spell a PC takes cause they might try to modify it without your knowledge or take a spell their not spost to have. Also if they want to try to talk their way out of encounters instead of being murder hobos let them do that cause you can get some amazing stuff, for instence i was the team paladin and we snuck into the bad guys base with the help of the dragon you were spose to kill in sandpoint after we snunk in i was able to walk through a lunch room full of giants by asking them where their boss was.
Playing through this campaign currently with a dwarf warpriest and having no problems so far. I don't think anything other than the general don't allow summoners or *personal preference here* no gunslingers can be applied.
None of the ACG Classes will break things, Gunslingers can be problematic as a lot of creatures in this path rely on natural armour and so have very low touch AC but that is a common problem.
As one of my players said above Synthesist Summoner is somewhat overpowered and in fact difficult not to make overpowered.
Arcanist could be a problem as suggested above but probably no worse than a Wizard.
Depending on number and optimisation level of your players you may need to boost some encounters, I did but I was still able to make the major boss encounters challanging to the players , in particular make sure to prepare the end boss properly as with the right spell choice for your party he can be really effective and should come close to a TPK
Thanks everyone for the advice.
Also any advice for if most of my players will be under optimized?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Thanks everyone for the advice.
Also any advice for if most of my players will be under optimized?
Under optimised PCs should make your job easier because you might not have to boost the enemies as much. The AP assumes non-optimal PCs, rather than super powerful ones.
Just watch out for the first few sections where the difference between a walk over and a TPK can be a handful of dice rolls. In particular at a certain fort and when fighting an annoying small creature whose name starts with E.Check out the GM threads in the Runelords forum, there's lots of advice there.
Thanks everyone for the advice.
Also any advice for if most of my players will be under optimized?
Under optimised PCs should make your job easier because you might not have to boost the enemies as much. The AP assumes non-optimal PCs, rather than super powerful ones.
Just watch out for the first few sections where the difference between a walk over and a TPK can be a handful of dice rolls. In particular at a certain fort and when fighting an annoying small creature whose name starts with E.Check out the GM threads in the Runelords forum, there's lots of advice there.
+1
I'm running this now, and one player chose a Master Summoner and has completely dominated due to the first part being primarily goblins. His character required me to put in a ton of extra time tweaking encounters so that he didn't trivialize them. I'd recommend not allowing anything but a vanilla Summoner if you have someone who just has to play one.
How many players in your group? The AP's are written for 4, 15-pt buy. As the others have said, no need for optimized characters. Just be aware that some encounters run the risk of a TPK - not most, but some.
I fail to see how this campaign is ''easy''. I let my player create 25 pts character, with all the books open... and still, 11 character died in the process (one TPK, one almost TPK). For now, I am the DM of a 5 man team:
-A Conjuration Wizard Human(quite optimized, with a human cleric as follower)
-A Kensai Magus with DD elve
-A Fighet tower shield master Dwarf (quite optimized)
-A Bloodrager human
-A Paladin Atzlanti with a permanent undead form 2
And still, thei're not havin a ''easy ride'' for now.
Tactics can make or break a team regardless of power level. I'd be tempted to reduce their options and level of power until they learn how to work well together...If, that is, they are a bit noobish and swamped in choices. However, they might simply have had bad luck with the dice!
There are several places which can easily be TPKs regardless of skill in this AP, take a look at the Runelords forum.
Tactics can make or break a team regardless of power level. I'd be tempted to reduce their options and level of power until they learn how to work well together...If, that is, they are a bit noobish and swamped in choices. However, they might simply have had bad luck with the dice!
There are several places which can easily be TPKs regardless of skill in this AP, take a look at the Runelords forum.
True, the dice is for something in this quest (one of my player got for nickname ''lucky number 4'' for some reason...). But they got a good experience of those game (2 of them played D&D since 20 years ago, each week.). And I am probably an evil DM (in many area, the monster will go to the sound of fighting, instead of waiting in their room...)
True, the dice is for something in this quest (one of my player got for nickname ''lucky number 4'' for some reason...). But they got a good experience of those game (2 of them played D&D since 20 years ago, each week.). And I am probably an evil DM (in many area, the monster will go to the sound of fighting, instead of waiting in their room...)Tactics can make or break a team regardless of power level. I'd be tempted to reduce their options and level of power until they learn how to work well together...If, that is, they are a bit noobish and swamped in choices. However, they might simply have had bad luck with the dice!
There are several places which can easily be TPKs regardless of skill in this AP, take a look at the Runelords forum.
Also, see the Obituaries thread, if you haven't already.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If someone really twerks it
Given most of the players I've had over the years, this sounds terrifying.